


honey, baby, love

by princesskay



Category: Mindhunter (TV 2017)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-22
Updated: 2020-01-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:08:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22356187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princesskay/pseuds/princesskay
Summary: A slip of the tongue turns out to mean more about Bill and Holden's budding relationship than they first thought.
Relationships: Holden Ford/Bill Tench
Comments: 23
Kudos: 187





	honey, baby, love

**Author's Note:**

> Based on this prompt I got on tumblr from anonymous: i’d love to see them on like the early stages of their relationship trying to see how they feel about calling each other ‘baby’ ‘love’ n other disgustingly sweet pet names. just some pure fun h/b interaction figuring out what works for them!
> 
> This was supposed to be a drabble but it kind of got out of control so here we are. This is so fucking sappy I almost hate myself for writing it lol Enjoy!

It started on a Friday when they got off the plane in Dulles fresh off a closed case in California. Bill’s casual suggestion that he stay the night and perhaps the weekend at Holden’s place had melded into an extended sleepover spanning past the weekend into Monday and Tuesday. 

Several pairs of his clothes and underwear had already migrated to Holden’s place, and Holden appeared to do laundry every other day whether he had a full basket load or not, allowing for the arrangement without his having to pick anything up from his place. In just a few days’ time, he realized he didn’t miss his apartment at all, and it was quite nice to be waking up next to someone else each morning. 

It isn’t until Wednesday morning, when Bill is scheduled for court deposition and Holden is meant to be driving down to North Carolina for an interview that their situation is forced to find a natural conclusion. 

Bill wakes with a little flower of disappointment blooming in his chest. The morning sunlight is pouring past the curtains, dappling Holden’s bare shoulders in bands of white and yellow. He’s still asleep, breathing deeply and heavily, unaware of reality and what the day holds just yet. 

Bill extends a hand to gently touch the soft skin stretched across his shoulder blade. A weary sigh pushes from his chest unbidden. The relationship is barely two months old. He has no plans of moving in with Holden, or even opening such a thing up to discussion; but he can’t quell the sense of contentment, the realization that he hasn’t felt this happy in a long time. Years even. 

Holden mutters a stirring sound as Bill’s palm follows the gentle curve of his spine. Shifting closer, Bill presses a kiss to the back of his neck, and feels the shudder that rolls down his spine. 

“Good morning.” 

“Morning.” Holden murmurs, his back arching against the warmth of Bill’s chest clinging to his shoulders. 

Bill pushes up onto his elbow so that he can get a good look at Holden’s face. 

Holden rolls onto his back, blinking drowsily. He’s barely managed to get his eyes open before Bill smothers him with a kiss. A surprised but pleased noise whimpers from the back of his throat. His arms wind around Bill’s neck, pulling him down closer. 

When their mouths break apart, Bill catches a glimpse of the clock on the nightstand. 

“Fuck.” He mutters. “I have to get going. Deposition’s at eight thirty.” 

“Me too.” Holden sighs. “Gregg is meeting me at Quantico.” 

Bill chuckles as he rolls out of bed. “You wanna take bets on how he does?” 

“He’s gotten better.” Holden allows, tossing the sheets back with a sigh. “I’d just rather have you there.” 

“I know. I can’t get out of this deposition.”

Casting another hurried glance at the clock, Bill exits the bedroom to the bathroom across the hall. After taking a quick shower, he comes into the living room to find that Holden had ironed and hung up his shirt and trousers. He gets dressed quickly, noting the dwindling time he has before the court appointment. 

When he peeks into the kitchen, Holden is putting ingredients into the blender. 

“You want some?” He asks. 

“No thanks. Coffee?”

“It’s ready.” 

“Thanks.” Bill says, shuffling past him to the coffee pot. He pours himself a cup, and stirs in plenty of sugar. 

“We’ll probably be done with the interview by seven or eight.” Holden says, “Call me?” 

“Yeah, of course. You’re driving home tomorrow morning?” 

“Yep.” 

“Great. I can’t wait to hear about it.” Bill says, pausing to drop a kiss on Holden’s cheek as he rushes for the door. “I’ve really gotta go. Thanks for the coffee. And the ironing.”

“You’re welcome.” Holden says, smiling brightly. 

Bill grabs his briefcase from the living room, and heads for the door before realizing he’s left his cigarettes on the coffee table. Muttering a curse, he goes back for the cigarettes. He’s just past the front door when he realizes he’s forgotten something else.

“Oh hey, honey, do you have the phone number for the hotel?” 

Silence echoes from the kitchen for a minute, and it takes him just as long to realize what’s just come out of his mouth. Heat rushes to his cheeks so quickly that he can feel the spike in his blood pressure. Biting back a curse, he nudges the door open again to glimpse Holden peeking at him from just inside the kitchen. 

“Honey?” Holden asks, his eyebrows rising.

“I, um … sorry, that just slipped out.” Bill says, clearing his throat against the knot of embarrassment drawing tight. 

Holden purses his lips against a smile. Bill can’t tell whether he’s amused or pleased. 

“Yeah, I have it.” He says. 

Bill waits anxiously in the doorway while Holden grabs a piece of paper and a pencil and jots the number down. As Holden approaches him, he glances at the floor, trying vainly to hide the uncomfortable flush crawling up his throat. 

“Here.” Holden says, pressing the piece of paper into his hand. He drops a chaste kiss to the corner of Bill’s mouth. “Good luck at the deposition.” 

~

That evening, Bill stares at the telephone on the nightstand beside his bed. The scrap paper Holden had written the hotel number on is sitting in left hand while he smokes a cigarette with the right.

They’ll have to talk about it.  _ Honey.  _ Holden can’t leave well enough alone. Grudgingly, Bill thinks it’s one of the things he loves most about Holden. His tenacity. 

Bill sighs, and picks up the phone. He dials the number, and puts in the room extension. Holden answers on the first ring. 

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s me.” 

“Hi,  _ honey. _ ”

Bill leans back against the pillows, and rolls his eyes though Holden can’t see the physical irritation. “I’m not living that one down, huh?”

“No.” Holden says, chuckling softly. “Do you want to?” 

“Well, yeah.” Bill says, “I didn’t really mean to say that, you know. It kind of just …” 

“I know, slipped out.” Holden says, his voice softening. 

There’s a beat of silence, and Bill can hear a question hovering in Holden’s tone of voice. 

“What?” He presses. 

“Nothing. I just … I don’t- … Are we pet name people?” Holden asks, carefully. 

Bill takes a drag of his cigarette, shifting uncomfortably against the pillow. The drab walls of his apartment glare back at him, a bit too rooted in reality for the hopeful sentimentality of this conversation. 

“Ah … no, not really.” Bill says. “It was an accident, Holden. And it just makes me think about Nancy so can we just drop it?” 

“Yeah, of course it does. Sorry, I wasn’t thinking about that.” 

“It’s fine.” Bill says, “Let’s just move on. How was the interview?” 

“It was good.” Holden says, “You owe me money, though, because Gregg did fine. I think he’s finally getting the hang of it.”

For the next two hours, Holden summarizes the interview and his initial impressions. Bill offers some of his own insights, but he’s more content to lay back against the pillows, listening to the soft, rhythmic cadence of Holden’s voice making the rest of the world melt away. After spending four days together, Bill hadn’t thought he could miss him so terribly after one day’s absence, but there’s a pronounced ache that comes with hearing his voice without being able to touch him. 

As the hour nears ten o’clock, Holden has exhausted the details of the interview. His voice takes on a new, tentative quality as he murmurs, “Are you back at your apartment?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Mm. What about this weekend?” 

“What about it?” 

“Are you coming back to mine?”

“You want me to?” 

“Yes.” Holden says, without hesitation. “This bed is lonely without you.”

“Okay, we can do that.” Bill agrees, hearing his voice tremble slightly underneath of a steadying breath. 

Holden’s intuitive ear picks up the ripple of tension from across the phone line. 

“You okay?” He murmurs. 

“Yeah. It’s just …” 

“Just what?” 

Bill chews the inside of his cheek, and rolls over in bed to gaze at the plug where the phone cord is attached to the cradle, connecting the two of them across the distant miles. It feels safer this way, admitting that a part of him is deeply afraid with this gap between them. 

“This is all just moving very quickly, don’t you think?” He asks, pressing a choked little laugh into the question to displace its severity, its weight. 

“You mean us.” 

“Yeah.” Bill says, clutching the receiver tighter against his ear. “It’s been two months and …” 

“Two months?” Holden echoes. “Bill, we’ve known each other for years.” 

“Not like this.” 

“I have to disagree.” Holden says, sounding both confident and baffled by Bill’s hesitation. 

“How so?” Bill asks, “It was a little different when we weren’t sleeping together.” 

“Yes, but … You’ve been everything to me, Bill.” Holden says, his voice dropping to a gentle whisper. “A colleague, a mentor, a friend, a partner … Now this. I know you, and I know what I want.” 

Bill closes his eyes, a bittersweet pang of joy filling his chest. God, how he wishes he could freefall into life and emotion the way Holden does, trusting his own hubris rather than the cruelty of the world. 

“So.” Holden says, clearing his throat. “You’re coming over this weekend?” 

Bill swallows down his insecurities. “Yes.” 

“Okay, good.” Holden says, “And, I’m sorry to bring this up again, but I think … it doesn’t have to be that word. If it bothers you so much, it could be something else.” 

Bill sighs, “Are we back on the ‘honey’ thing?” 

“Yes.”

“We agreed to drop that.”

“You did. I’m just saying, I wouldn’t mind it.”

“You wouldn’t mind it?” Bill repeats, “I didn’t know you were such a romantic, Holden.” 

“I didn’t think you were either. But you can’t get much sweeter than ‘honey’.” 

Bill scowls. “What’s wrong with your name? I’ve been calling you by your name for years.”

“Everyone calls me that.” Holden says, “Some things are just between two people.”

Bill wrestles through a few possible replies before shooting a glance at the clock, and latching onto the first, plausible excuse to end the conversation. “It’s getting pretty late. I’m sure you have an early start tomorrow.” 

A few seconds of stubborn silence before Holden replies, “Yes.” 

“We should get off of here.” 

“Yeah, we should.”

“Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow, then?” 

“Yeah, okay. See you.” 

“Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Bill.”

Bill hangs up the phone, and slides a new cigarette out of the pack. He lights up, and takes a deep drag, drowning out the faint squeeze of nerves in his lungs. He  _ has  _ known Holden for years, but he knew Nancy most of his life. It didn’t change a thing about the way their relationship ended. Sometimes, it feels as if everything the universe has an expiry date which looms closer and closer the older he gets. It’s hard to trust a feeling when feelings are so hard to pin down. 

He blows smoke rings at the ceiling until his eyes get heavy, and his exhaustion is denser than his worries. Dropping his half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray, he pulls the sheets over his head. 

~

Over the latter half of the week, Holden pays close attention to Bill’s behavior. At work, he acts perfectly normal. He’s practiced at keeping a stoic layer of professionalism between them, a skill Holden has yet to entirely teach himself. It’s difficult not to stare or smile, to react to every gesture and word the way he does when they’re alone. There’s days he feels like nothing more than a marionette on Bill’s fingers, tugged to and fro by the slightest tremor, deepest desires dancing in the sweeping pull of his arms. He’s always hanging fastidiously from every tone and glance, but their conversation on Wednesday has left him entirely transfixed. 

It’s a small, almost inconsequential thing. A slip of the tongue. But it unlocked something inside both of them, a door leading deeper into this new and fledgling relationship that neither of them had seen coming. 

_ Honey.  _ Holden liked the sound of it, but he’s selfish in that manner - taking something that doesn’t belong to him, or rather picking up off the ground something that used to belong to someone else. To him it’s a brand new penny, but to Bill it’s tarnished copper, a painful fragment of what once was. There has to be something else that Bill is willing to say or give, something that could ease this unstemmed need in Holden’s chest for his attention and affection. 

He tries to tell himself that it doesn’t matter. But it does, because he wants every detail and possibility of this relationship. It’s the only thing that matters to him right now, and he wants it all. Selfishly unashamed, he wants everything that Bill is willing to give. 

The weekend arrives in full summer bloom, the sun high and warm, the breeze stirring with the scents of flowers and freshly trimmed grass. They could do anything on a day like today, but Holden has no interest in going outdoors. 

They’re snuggled up on the couch, Holden’s head on Bill’s shoulder, their fingers interlocked when Bill suddenly loses interest in whatever black-and-white Western film is playing out in sprawling, grainy clips across the screen. His fingers crawl out from between Holden’s to find it’s way along his thigh, searching unabashedly against his groin. 

“Ohh.” Holden utters a groan, his body already flushing hot as Bill turns to muzzle the sound with a kiss. 

Their mouths collide in slow-motion, Bill’s lips dragging long and hard across Holden’s before nudging them open to press his tongue inside. Holden opens up the kiss, panting whimpers urged free by the deliberate stroke of Bill’s hand against his burgeoning erection. 

Bill’s mouth lets up for a brief moment, allowing their eyes connect over the gasp of breaths rushing back and forth in the scarce space between them. Holden swallows hard, and bites back a groan that swells in the back of his throat. The hazy blue of Bill’s eyes clutch onto him, holding him in their thrall while his hand slips beneath the waistband of his trousers. The first graze of his fingertips is like fire tracking down Holden’s hard cock, urging a wave of tingles to swamp his belly. 

“Oh, fuck.” Holden whispers, his eyes rolling back and his hips canting forward into the light caress. 

Bill leans in to kiss the exposed stretch of his neck where his pulse is beginning to pound and his skin is flushed with sudden heat. His breath tickles Holden’s earlobe, followed by the faint vibration of a pleased groan. 

Need gallops through Holden’s chest, sudden and blinding. He grasps at the elastic waistband of the pajama pants, and eagerly tugs the fabric away. He pulls his briefs away from Bill’s stroking hand in the same motion, pushing them down his thighs and below his knees. His legs come eagerly apart with the trousers out of the way, and he splays himself open, thrusting up against the steady downward stroke of Bill’s hand. 

“God, Bill …” He gasps, clutching at Bill’s chest. “I’m close, I’m …”

Bill pulls back to watch the pleasure roll across Holden’s face. His hand strokes unerring and persistent, quickly dragging Holden up against the edge, right where everything goes taut and hazy, and it aches just before the orgasm takes him under. 

“That’s good.” Bill’s voice reaches in a husky timbre from beyond the fog, “So good, baby.”

Drunk on arousal and the wild spark of pleasure, Holden can barely process the words before he loses himself to first violent spasm of orgasm. His mouth stretches open in a breathless cry as Bill’s hand works him across the threshold of pleasure. His hips surge up from the couch, shuddering through wave after wave of satisfaction that grips his insides. He can feel the hot spatter of cum on his belly and chest, the hot flood of release draining from inside his longing body. 

As the pleasure fades, Holden sinks down against the couch. He blinks against the sparks of pleasure bordering his vision, and struggles to ease his breathing. 

Bill hovers over him, wet fingers brushing up against his spent cock. His mouth curves in a faint smile. “That didn’t take much.”

Holden flushes, and purses back a smile. “I missed you.”

“You’ve seen me all week.” 

“Not like this.” 

Bill chuckles, softly, and leans in to kiss him on the mouth. “You’re hard work, you know that?”

“Hard work?”

“Hard to satisfy.”

“Okay, I see.” Holden says, stretching his arms languidly above his head. “We’re not going to talk about it.”

“It?” 

“ _ Baby? _ ” Holden says, pointedly.

Bill’s eyes narrow just before he glances away. He draws in a clipped breath. “You don’t like it?” 

“What? No. I liked it. I liked it a lot.” 

Bill’s gaze creeps back up to meet his. “Really?” 

“Yes. I wouldn’t lie.” Holden says, shoving up from the couch cushions to press a kiss to Bill’s mouth. “You can use it as much as you want.”

“Okay.” Bill mutters, his voice melting down into a raspy sigh as Holden’s hand strokes it’s way down his belly and against his hardening erection. “I think I can live with it.” 

Holden touches him confidently, letting the faint tremor of hesitation disperse behind them. This feels natural, the way it always has - the raw need overtaking logic, the physicality of their desires. The rest they can figure out, he thinks - boundaries like sleepovers, and late night phone calls, Bill’s shirts on his ironing board, his black coffee next to a fruit smoothie, _ honey _ and  _ baby, _ and  _ the love of my life. _


End file.
